~ insanitybytes

Blame…

Blame makes me crazy. It is such a futile, weak, and shame based response to all that ails us, and oh so human, too. Who’s fault is this?? Because surely it is not mine! Somebody was bad here, but not me and whoever it was they better fess up so I can cast stones and wash my own hands clean of this thing…

John 9, Jesus heals a man blind since birth. The very first thing the disciples say is, “Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?” That really is the nature of people, the first thing we like to ask is, who’s fault is this, who do we blame?

Listen to Christ speaking now however, He teaches us something completely different, “Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.”

Why is this man blind? That the works of God should be made manifest in him. For the glory of God! This man is blind, not because someone is bad, not because of wrong doing, but to make manifest the glory of God.

Jesus goes on to say something very profound, “I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”

“As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” I love that, it speaks to personal responsibility. Since those of us who follow Christ are called to emulate him, however imperfectly that winds up looking, “As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” Make haste, too, daylight is wasting.

How different the world would look if every time we were dealt a crappy hand of cards, we would look to Christ and praise God for the gift He has just handed us, the opportunity to be His Light. If we would truly embrace the fact that every hardship, every challenge, every affliction exists to make manifest the glory of God, how different everything would be. These are not curses, these are blessings, and even though I cannot always see it, I know it, I have seen God in action enough times to trust in His word, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”

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18 thoughts on “Blame…”

You know IB,that has to be the very hardest part of Faith. I try to deal with it by ignoring it – much like I ignore age, culture, skin color, gender. “Òh,you`re blind – I hadn`t noticed.“ I know this is not right, that acknowledgement of reality is critical in moving forward. It is also not possible to explain to anyone inquiring how chronic pain and or missing faculties are a part of God’s plan. I have faith that they are but no evidence at all that it serves a positive purpose. When you read the Bible God and Jesus spend a fair bit of energy gaining people`s trust by showing or explaining how His actions are for the greater good. He appears to have shifted gears and no longer does that. I do have faith but I cannot make a case why others should embrace God when it comes to pain and such.

All but a few people deal awkwardly with the pain of others. I certainly know talking to hurting people is not a gift I have.

Does the Bible explain the need for suffering? I think it tells us more than we want to know, but the Bible doesn’t tell us everything. There seems to be three reasons for that.
1. The Bible only tells us what we need to know, but that is quite a lot. Sometimes we don’t even realize what the Bible is telling us until we do need to know, but it does tell us what we need to know.
2. We would not understand any more than what the Bible already tells us. I know I have enough work studying the Bible as it is. If it were any longer, who would have time to do the good works we were made to do?
3. The scribes had to copy the Bible by hand, and I suspect they enjoyed having the time to contemplate what they read. They showed that joy, for example, by adding beautiful designs in the margins.

So the Bible is long enough as it as.

What does the Bible say about blame? “Blame” is not the word the Bible uses. The word the Bible uses is judge. The Sermon on the Mount probably contains the most pointed instructions about judging others, but that little story in John 9 certainly indicates our propensity for making judgements, even when it makes no sense to do so.

Why must we blame someone? I think the issue is pride. If we were more humble, we would more readily observe the obvious, how little control we have.

I was working at NASA when Space Shuttle Challenger suffered a massive failure a launch. What did the politicians do? They went headhunting, looking for people to blame. The main mistake was putting a school teacher on board, but the bureaucrats running the agency did not understand the danger. They were thinking one chance in a thousand. They did not understand the statistics. After many successes, perhaps no one did.

The engineers made certain that the subsystem they designed (SUBSYSTEM) would fail 999 times out of a 1000. However, the Space Shuttle had lots of subsystems, and the statistics only accounted for the risks the engineers had accounted for. Nobody anticipated how the seals between the segments in the solid rocket boosters would behave when they were cold.

Really, we can be quite silly about looking for someone to blame. We have even gotten to the point we try to blame the damage done hurricanes, clearly beyond our control, on government officials. Nobody has to live in coastal area, particularly in an area below sea level, and almost nobody has to stay when forecast calls for hurricane conditions. Still, we want to blame someone.

So why does God, who actually is All-Powerful, allow us to suffer? I think the Bible answers that question. His light shines brightest where it is darkest. We just have to learn to let it shine through us.

Excellent comment Citizen Tom. I have always said to anyone who will listen how sparse the info in the Bible is while it is simultaneously denser than any other written material. Sparse because we assume a single book can describe a supreme being who built the universe. We have written millions of tomes about life and we have barely scratched the surface – how could we expect a single tome to describe all of the supreme being that not only created the universe but is much greater than the universe? Obviously the Bible is but a primer. And yet it is so dense that every time we read it we get more from it – and each and every decision point in our lives has some advise in the Bible.

That said, it is not possible for us to think we can understand the motivations of a supreme being.

For every 1000 failures, 999 would be alerted as failures = so 99.9% of failures were registered and communicated. Your car would be much lower -less than 500 out of 1000. The problem is that this only applied to designated subsytems – ones considered either high risk or high priority. Whole subsystems of lesser risk were not monitored.

In other words, you meant to say “The engineers made certain that the subsystem they designed would recognize 99.9% of failures within that subsystem and communicate these failures to the main system.”?

Here is a more serious example of our imperfection. I don’t enjoy driving, and that not just because of the frustration of sitting in DC traffic. I worry because I know I am an imperfect driver, and I know every other driver on the road is an imperfect driver. Why is that so significant? If I live long enough and drive long enough, sooner or latter I will have an accident, and I will hurt someone. That is just the way life is in an imperfect world with imperfect people. We make mistakes, and mistakes have consequences.

What can we do about the fact we are each imperfect? Of course, we can strive to be better, and we should. Excuses don’t help. Nevertheless, we can also pray for each other, love each other, and forgive each other.

When we consider a problem, it is easy to identify symptoms related to the problem as the cause of the problem. I think that is what you are doing.

Let’s consider why the world is fallen. Don’t we call it a fallen world because of the fall of Adam and Eve? What caused the fall of Adam and Eve? How did Satan persuade them to eat the forbidden fruit? Didn’t Satan tell them that eating that fruit would make them like God?

Genesis 3:2-5 New King James Version (NKJV)

2 And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; 3 but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.’”

4 Then the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. 5 For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

Because they were not perfect, Adam and Eve believed Satan’s lie. Because they wanted to be like God, perfect, Adam and Eve wanted to believe Satan’s lie.

To redeem Adam and Eve, God cursed them and the world. Because Adam and Eve chose to sin, we live in a fallen world. Therefore, we die, but we suffer because we sin. Otherwise, even in our cursed condition, we would be content.

Consider Satan himself. Before he temped man, Satan fell from grace — and heaven. Did Satan suffer from living in a fallen world? No. He suffered from a lack of humility. He could not accept the fact that God is God, and he is not.

We often have the same problem that Satan has. Instead of trusting in a Holy God, we want to be God. Thus, pride, our desire to be God, causes us to sin.

“I think the suffering that is most dangerous to our spiritual well-being is the suffering that is the result of living in a fallen world, not suffering from our own imperfections.”

“When we consider a problem, it is easy to identify symptoms related to the problem as the cause of the problem. I think that is what you are doing.
[…]
Because Adam and Eve chose to sin, we live in a fallen world. Therefore, we die, but we suffer because we sin. Otherwise, even in our cursed condition, we would be content.

Consider Satan himself. Before he temped man, Satan fell from grace — and heaven. Did Satan suffer from living in a fallen world? No. He suffered from a lack of humility. He could not accept the fact that God is God, and he is not.

We often have the same problem that Satan has. Instead of trusting in a Holy God, we want to be God. Thus, pride, our desire to be God, causes us to sin.”

I agree to an extent, but I will attempt to clarify my position to explain why I disagree as well.

We live in a fallen world because Adam and Eve sinned. Some of our suffering may be the result of our sin. But some of our suffering is the result of being in a fallen world. Some of our suffering is because we do not have the perfect bodies and environment that Adam and Eve had in Eden. For example, one person develops lung cancer as the result of the sin of smoking marijuana and suffers. Another person develops lung cancer for no apparent reason and suffers. In the first case, I think most people will recognize that it is the result of their own behavior. In the second case, a common question is “Why does God let bad things happen?”. This often results in a spiritual crisis for the individual and, often for family and friends.

You don’t state this specifically, but you seem to imply that sin always causes suffering. I question that, as it appears that many people sin, yet prosper in the world’s perception. They don’t always seem to suffer, but perhaps they do, yet never admit it.

Perhaps it’s only semantics, but I don’t agree that pride causes us to sin. Pride, as well as other carnal desires, causes us to find sin attractive. We are not victims of these desires, but we sin when we choose to succumb to the temptation of sin.

As this post indicates, it can be rather difficult to ascertained who is to blame for any particular bit of suffering. The Book of Job also addresses this issue. God actually allowed Job to suffer BECAUSE he was a good man.

Consider how John Wesley explains Job 1:12.

Verse 12

[12] And the LORD said unto Satan, Behold, all that he hath is in thy power; only upon himself put not forth thine hand. So Satan went forth from the presence of the LORD.

Behold, … — It seems strange, that, God should give Satan such a permission as this. But he did it for his own glory, for the honour of Job, for the explanation of providence, and the encouragement of his afflicted people in all ages.

We live in a world fallen because of sin. Yet as Romans 8:28 explains, God makes all things, even our suffering, work to the benefit of those who love Him. So it is that when we suffer, we suffer because of sin, but not necessarily our own sins.

Does pride cause us to sin? Is pride the root of all sins? Well, pride is the opposite of humility? When we are humble, that doesn’t mean we demean our own abilities. It simply means we strive to be obedient our Creator because He is our rightful Lord. That is, we humble our self before God and put Him in charge of our life. Therefore, when we sin, we do so because we have failed to humble our self before our rightful Lord. We put our own desires before God’s commands. That is why every sin is a sin against God.